As the fight against the injustice of the UC financial hikes reigns on
campus, the students of Banana Slugs for Animals (BSA) are waging a
lesser-known fight for a different kind of injustice. During the week of
protests and the occupation of Kerr Hall, BSA sought to bring visibility to
current issues affecting animals such as factory farming and animal testing
in research.

During the week of Nov. 16, BSA set up a provocative animal liberation
display brought by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in
UC Santa Cruz's Quarry Plaza.

The display presented graphic images of human oppression that closely
resembled images of animal oppression. People were drawn in by the large
display that showed oversized pictures of humans receiving body mutilations
and individuals being beaten by police.

Eric Deardorff, a fourth-year philosophy major, founded BSA last year
after working for PETA, the largest animal activist group in the world, for
four years.

'We would like to think that human oppression is over, but there are
still practices of clitorectomy in the Middle East and in Africa, and there
are still political prisoners in Iraq, which is just terrible,' Deardorff
said.

Coming to UCSC, Deardorff thought it was very strange that a school with
such a reputation for having loads of vegetarians and vegans did not have a
group that fights for animal rights.

'There was a group here many years ago, but as soon as I found out that
there hadn't been one for a while I wanted to start the group so we could
have some formal animal advocacy here on campus and get some things done,' Deardorff said.

In addition to attention-grabbing displays, BSA also focuses its efforts
on tabling, protests, potlucks, volunteering at local animal shelters, food
giveaways and film showings.

Adrianne Burke, the liberation coordinator for PETA 2, the youth
component of PETA, has been spending the fall season bringing the display to
middle schools, high schools and colleges all across the country. The final
stop on her tour was UCSC.

'Every student body on our tour has found the display moving,' Burke
said. 'I feel that UCSC was a great school because the students had an
overwhelmingly positive response to the display.'

Burke believes that the power of the display comes from the way it
relates animal suffering to human suffering.

'Students were able to see how chickens spend their entire lives in a
space the size of a sheet of paper, how cows are branded to show ownership,
and they saw how pigs are castrated without any pain killers,' Burke said.
'When we told the students about how all of this was a standard practice in
the industry, many people were moved to take action against it.'

The group also held a protest in front of KFC and McDonald's restaurants
on Mission Street on Nov. 20 in the pouring rain.

'When we do the protests, they are during rush hour traffic and people
can read our signs as they drive by,' said BSA member Nick Conrad. 'Usually
we are waving and smiling at the people, so we can give off a positive image
as we advertise the brutality toward animals.'

Deardorff pointed out that cruelty toward animals is not the only reason
to choose a meatless diet. According to the United Nations, factory farming
is the number one cause of greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to
global warming.

'Factory farming is more harmful to the environment than all the cars,
trucks, planes, trains [and] SUVs combined,' Deardorff said. 'With the
simple step of changing our diets by just eating less meat or going
vegetarian or vegan, we can eliminate some of the biggest causes of global
warming just with our forks.'

One of Deardorff and BSA's biggest goals is to show that given how much
people have done in the past to help fight against human oppression, they
are able to do the same for animals.

'Some people think we can't change what is happening when we see the
suffering, but I want people to know that we can change what's going on,'
Deardorff said. 'Sometimes it is changing our diet, sometimes it's changing
what we wear or writing letters to the editor. We have changed abuses to
people in the past and we can do it in the future with animals.'